Core Priority Discussion Outcomes

In March 2026, we started an initiative to discuss potential core priorities, starting with a blog post announcing the discussion schedule. Over the last month, we've collected feedback on potential core development priorities.
 

Potential Core Priorities:

• Automatic Updates: much progress has been made here. Can we finally carry this one over the finish line? A clear path forward exists. The main challenge is integrating with backdropcms.org, which will require careful, methodical work. See Issue #2018 for the overall list of work.
• New Admin Theme: There is strong interest in a modern admin (back-end) theme and the availability of Gin makes this a realistic target. We would need to create a new ‘core ready’ branch of the Gin theme and work in contrib to bring it to a place where it can be brought directly into core. Gin comes with some more complicated development tooling than core would natively be able to support. We need to decide what is appropriate to keep and what is not. 
• Recipes: We need to decide on what core support for Recipes should look like and whether or not this is a realistic goal for implementation in the near future. A first step might include a written proposal or a working proof of concept to better help us gauge what is involved. 
• AI Readiness: Implementing changes to core to make Backdrop CMS AI ready. This may or may not mean AI features in core or it could be as simple as better and more secure handling of API credentials. Our first step is a discussion of what AI "readiness" looks like for Backdrop CMS, see this Zulip thread on AI Readiness for the initial start of this conversation. The leadership team is also drafting an AI Acceptable Use policy, which should guide how AI is used in contributing code to core and contrib projects.
• Front End Theme: The out-of-box experience looks a bit dated. Our front end theme is the first impression that we make when folks come to evaluate Backdrop. A new theme in core is a huge task and would likely need the leadership of an agency to make design decisions and lead the work. We first need to evaluate if we have the support and resources to make this happen? If so, what would the process look like?

Weekly Meeting Recordings:

• Weekly Dev Meeting (Automatic Updates) - March 26, 2026
• Weekly Dev Meeting (Admin Theme) - April 2, 2026
• Weekly Dev Meeting (Recipes) - April 9, 2026
• Weekly Dev Meeting (AI Readiness) - April 16, 2026
• (Note we did not get to the Front End theme topic yet).

This Session

Come and discuss with us the outcomes of each of these meetings and help evaluate where we should focus our core effort for one (or two) of these potential large-scale projects.